Most approaches to capturing 3D models of real-world objects involve multiple cameras that are rarely cheap, and are sometimes tricky to calibrate. The University of Glasgow has developed a method that ditches those cameras altogether. Its system has four single-pixel sensors stitching together a 3D image based on the reflected intensity of light patterns cast by a projector. Reducing the pixel count lowers the cost per sensor to just a few dollars, and extends the sensitivity as far as terahertz wavelengths. Real-world products are still a long way off, but the university sees its invention as useful for cancer detection and other noble pursuits. Us? We’d probably just waste it on creating uncanny facsimiles of ourselves.
Via: New Scientist
Source: University of Glasgow
Related Posts:Question by Josh R: How is the playstation vita compare to a psp what are the comparible details that makes the vita better than a? what makes the vita work 299.99? and how is it dofferant than a psp
Best answer:
Answer by Anonymous playerKid, learn to spell
For one, the 3G model of the Vita is $ 299, the Wi-fi model is just $ 249
The Vita contains a quad-core processor, dual Analogs, OLED screen, more RAM than the PS3 for cross-game chat
What do you think? Answer below!
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Microsoft has announced a sweeping international expansion of Surface Pro availability. To this point, Microsoft’s top-tier Windows 8 tablet has only been for sale in the US, Canada, and China. But by the end of next month, that’s going to change in a big way; Microsoft says Surface Pro will reach the UK, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland by the end of May. In June, the international tour will continue with availability planned in Russia, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. The company’s base Surface RT product has already seen much wider availability overseas, but Microsoft plans to…
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In the crowded world of Android, it pays to be bold. HTC has spent years pairing its striking hardware designs with memorable software overlays for Android. But Samsung has surged ahead with a few bold moves of its own.
In an attempt to get some of its mojo back, HTC created a new smartphone with an old name: the HTC One. This $ 200 device (with two-year contract) will be available on April 19 from AT&T and Sprint. AT&T will also offer a $ 300 device with twice the memory, and a T-Mobile model is coming later this spring.
I enjoyed using an AT&T model and can recommend it to anyone looking for a new Android phone. It comes loaded with the latest version of Android and HTC’s usual Sense software overlay, which makes the One look and behave differently than other Android smartphones. In the future, the HTC One will be able to run Facebook Home, which puts the social network front and center. And I captured several extraordinary photos with this smartphone’s camera.
Still, it wasn’t flawless. I found the Back and Home icons didn’t always glow when I used the Facebook app, leaving me wondering how to navigate away from the app. And icons on the camera screen didn’t change from horizontal to vertical when I held the phone in portrait view. HTC attributed the former to a light sensor that may need tweaking and the latter to a bug it plans to fix via a software update later this year.
HTC One has a 4.7-inch touch screen that rivals the iPhone 5 and a high-quality camera.
If looks are important to you, you’ll like this smartphone’s design. It’s elegant and thin with a curved back that’s made to fit your palm. With a 4.7-inch touch screen at 468 pixels per inch, this display outshines Apple’s iPhone 5 and the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S4. Its aluminum build gives it a sturdy feel—but makes it slightly heavier than the S4 and iPhone 5. The One’s aluminum back felt a bit slippery at times and I dropped it on several occasions.
Voice calls sounded crisp and clear and though I didn’t perform a formal battery test, I found myself using the One for a full day without a recharge. AT&T’s 4G LTE network proved speedy for email, Web browsing and various apps, including Google Maps for navigation around Washington, D.C. In downtown D.C., my average download speed was 14.5 megabits per second, peaking at 18.78 MBPS, while uploads averaged 9.84 MBPS. This isn’t quite as fast as Verizon’s LTE, but it wasn’t enough to notice any drag.
The HTC One camera aims to dispel the megapixel myth that has flummoxed people—that a higher megapixel count always equals better photos. This smartphone’s camera is measured at 2 UltraPixels, which are larger than ordinary pixels and are designed to capture better quality images. HTC uses a better sensor that can capture 300% more light than many 13-megapixel cameras, an improved processor and optical-image stabilization, among other things.
I was skeptical at first. But I captured shots in a dark room with the lights off that looked crisp and clear—not blurry or washed out by a flash. I took a photo of someone in a dimly lit chapel and it looked as if the person was in a room with plenty of light.
Outside on a sunny day, this camera was just showing off. I captured many shots of spring flowers and a cherry blossom tree, sunlight glistening on flower petals and tree branches. Of the three smartphones in my bag, I repeatedly reached for the HTC One to take photos.
If you aren’t crazy about capturing videos that take up a lot of storage space on your phone, Zoes might be your speed. These are 3-second videos that are captured by shifting the camera capture button to Zoe. I took several Zoes, but found them unsatisfying. I captured a train whizzing by, flowers blowing in the wind and my husband making a funny face. They showed up in my phone’s photo gallery as moving pictures that reminded me of those portraits that hang on the walls in Harry Potter movies. Yet, I didn’t know quite what to do with them.
Enter HTC Zoe Share. This is a smart option that shares many photos and Zoes at once. Shares are emailed via a Web link that lasts for 180 days. I shared these links from my phone with friends who used computers, iPhones and iPads to open them.
The Zoes appeared mixed in with the still shots in an on-screen collage. But if you’re not using HTC Zoe Share, these three-second Zoe clips are pretty much stuck on your phone. If you try to share them via Facebook or Twitter, they appear as still images that can’t be emailed. And why would you really want to share just three seconds of anything?
A new interface called BlinkFeed appears on the HTC One’s home screen with a tap on its tile-like icon. BlinkFeed is meant to give you bits of information as you glance down at your phone in line at the coffee shop or while in the elevator.
You set up BlinkFeed to display content from news sources of your choice like the Associated Press, Huffington Post, ESPN and others. These feeds can be mixed in with your Twitter and Facebook news feeds.
The BlinkFeed design is attractive, showing photos and text in a Flipboard-like mesh that you can quickly scroll up or down. To read more about an article, tap on it to see a short summary, then follow a link to read the entire article.
Those looking for a new take on Android, and especially a better smartphone camera, should consider the HTC One.
Email Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com
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Back in 2010, our own John Biggs rightly described Parrot’s AR.Drone as ” the coolest thing [he had] seen in a long, long time.” Since then, Parrot has launched the AR.Drone 2.0 and while it’s still a very cool gadget, quadcopters have come a very long way since 2010. Last month, the folks at DJI, who mostly specialize in developing unmanned aerial systems for commercial use, sent me one of their consumer-oriented and GPS-enabled DJI Phantoms to review.
Most quadcopters are aimed at hobbyists and take a good amount of assembly and at least some experience with flying remote-controlled aircraft. The Phantom, which has a list price of $ 849 but currently retails for about $ 680, comes mostly pre-assembled and is extremely easy to fly, thanks to its built-in compass and GPS module. Thanks to having GPS built-in, the drone always knows where it is in relation to you. So depending on the mode you are flying in, every input you give will always be interpreted in relation to you and not in relation to where the front of the aircraft is (here’s a video that explains how this works).
The other cool thing about the GPS mode is that the drone can hover in position even if it’s windy. It’ll just auto-correct for the wind, thanks to its built-in autopilot (you probably want to turn this mode off when you are trying to take a video, however, as the constant corrections will show up in your videos).
This autopilot also kicks in if the Phantom loses its connection with your remote control if it flies out of reach or your remote runs out of battery, the drone itself is very low on battery, or because you turn it off to see if the autopilot actually works. Once the failsafe mode kicks in, the drone will simply fly up to 60 feet, fly back to where it first took off and land. I actually tried this and it worked surprisingly well. The drone touched down just about 3 feet from where I launched it. When you spent $ 700 on the drone and another $ 300 or so on a GoPro 3 Silver, that’s a nice feature to have.
The Phantom is a clear step up from something like the AR.Drone. Its communication distance is just under 1,000 feet and a maximum horizontal speed of about 32 feet per second and a descent speed of close to 20 feet per second. That’s fast and feels even faster if you are just learning how to fly it.
These specs show that this isn’t just a toy but can actually be used for some pretty impressive aerial photography. Indeed, since the Phantom launched earlier this year, a whole ecosystem has sprung up around it that provides owners with everything from improved propellers to cases and multi-axis camera gimbals. A gimbal, by the way, isn’t a must, but if you want to take really stable videos without the so-called “jello” effect (here’s a pretty extreme example of that), both a gimbal and some well-balanced after-market rotors will surely help.
Here is a video I took with the Phantom and a GoPro 3 White over the weekend:
The Phantom’s battery lasts just under 15 minutes, so you probably want to buy at least a second one, given that the package only includes a single 2,200mAh battery and a charger.
If you decide to get one of these, by the way, make sure you read the instructions and watch this series of videos before you turn it on. The Phantom may look like a toy and is easy to fly, but this is a pretty high-end piece of technology and there are a few things you need to know and do before your first flight.
With the 2013 NAB Show just around the corner, it’s a fair bet that DJI will announce a few new products in the coming days and we’ll make sure to keep a close eye on this company.
- gizmodo dji phantom
Google’s decision to drop Exchange ActiveSync support, a protocol used to sync Gmail calendar, contacts, and mail items on mobile devices, left Microsoft surprised and disappointed. The change means new Windows Phone users after January 30th with personal Gmail accounts will be unable to sync calendar and contact items. The Verge has learned that Microsoft is planning to support CardDAV and CalDAV in Windows Phone, Google’s new preferred route to sync contacts and calendars. The software giant has not yet issued a public statement on its plans, but sources at Microsoft have detailed an eyeopening path that has led to the decision. In exchanges that underline the tensions between Microsoft and Google, we understand that Microsoft was…
Game devs looking to enhance “engagement” (read: monetization) for their mobile titles now have an ally in Amazon. The Bezos-backed company has just made plug-ins available free to Kindle Fire developers using the popular Unity game engine. Now those devs will have access to APIs for In-Game purchasing and GameCircle which, in the latter case, allows for the addition of Achievements, as well as the ability to Whispersync across devices. So, what does this mean for you, the end user? Well, aside from the ability to continue playing from where you last left off on any of the company’s tabs, it also brings mobile gaming that much closer to the console experience. But mostly that you can look forward to a future bill filled with micropayments.
Continue reading Amazon offers Unity plug-ins to Kindle Fire devs, makes in-app payments possible
Filed under: Gaming, Tablets, Amazon
Via: The Next Web
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The launch of Android 4.2 brought a welcome smattering of extra features to the mobile world, but a recently discovered bug omits something slightly important: namely, the month of December. Dive into the People app on any device using the new OS, and the last 31 days of the year will be unavailable for contacts’ anniversaries and similar special occasions. Google is aware of the flaw, although it hasn’t yet said when it will have a fix in place. We’ve reached out to get a more definitive timetable for a solution beyond just what’s implied by the Gregorian calendar. In the meantime, don’t lean too heavily on that smartphone to remember an imminent birthday; people born in December are stiffed out of enough presents as it is.
[Thanks, Waverunnr]
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, Google
Android 4.2 bug omits December from the People app, makes end-of-year birthdays even less bearable originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Nov 2012 03:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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While the humble touchscreen has become the standard interface for most smartphones, and capacitive displays make it a painless experience, the folk at start-up Qeexo think things could still be improved. It’s developed a technology called FingerSense that could add even more functionality. Essentially, by using a small acoustic sensor, it measures the vibrations as objects tap the screen, and can tell the difference between them. So, for example, a knuckle tap could be used for “right-click.” The tech is able to spot the difference between materials, too, so even when no finger is involved, it can register input, a great assistance to those with longer fingernails. The fun doesn’t stop there, though, with the demo video after the break showing a Galaxy SIII with a modified display, able to register stylus input, even without official support for it. More input options can never be a bad thing, and if nothing else, it could certainly make those GarageBand drumming sessions a little more interesting.
Filed under: Cellphones, Displays, Mobile
Qeexo’s FingerSense lets touchscreens listen, makes any object an input device (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Nov 2012 02:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Apple made a big deal about the iPad mini providing an uncompromised iPad experience for users, and it’s standing by that by making it impossible for web developers to detect whether a web page is being read on an iPad or an iPad mini. Usually, devices provide a means with which developers can determine physical screen size, allowing them to create different wrappers for web content depending on what screen they’re being viewed on. Apple has made sure that’s not an option with the iPad mini, in an interesting move that’s very much in keeping with the company’s aims with the new, smaller tablet.
The inability to detect the Mini’s screen size is what a thread on Hacker News today uncovered, and what I spoke to iPad-friendly web content formatting company Onswipe about in an interview. The Onswipe guys echoed what I already suspected: Apple wants to do this in order to keep the web experience across iPads (both Mini and regular) consistent. The company stressed during its iPad mini launch event that it was “every inch an iPad,” and emphasized how apps would require no modification to work on iPad mini, which has the same screen resolution as the original iPad, just in a 7.9-inch package instead of an 8.9-inch one.
“There are always going to be developers who want to fine tune their experience,” Onswipe Chief Product Officer E.J. Kalafarski told me. “Obviously a button that’s designed to be finger-sized on the large iPad is going to be a little bit smaller than finger-sized on the mini. But all else being equal, the fact that it’s the same resolution, the same aspect ratio, the same number of pixels, Apple probably felt that was a worthy trade-off, to avoid any sort of ecosystem fragmentation, any need for developers to write or re-write second versions of their websites for the mini.”
If you start allowing developers to tweak web experiences for iPad mini, there are some definite implications in terms of consistency of experience. You could have users finding a different site than the one they’re used to on their existing iPads, and that might frustrate some users who are just looking to replicate what their iPads can already do, except smaller. Imagine if you were forced to use only a mobile site on iPad mini, the ones designed for smartphones, if some developers felt that provided a better overall experience. I’m sure more than a few users would be less than thrilled in that situation.
On the downside, developers will likely feel somewhat babysat by this move, since it ties their hands in terms of developing custom web experiences for what is still a different-sized device, which has definite UI implications. On the other hand, Apple avoids any uncertainty in what users expect from an iPad mini web-browsing experience. And, as Onswipe CEO Jason Baptiste pointed out, there’s the added benefit that Apple doesn’t have to worry about a situation where the iPad mini eventually becomes more popular than the iPad itself, which if you’re dealing with multiple types of content layouts, will require much more rework on the part of developers down the road.
Onswipe says its product still works perfectly well as-is, and suspects that’ll be the case for most web-based products targeted at the iPad, so this isn’t a huge issue. And for end users it’s probably ultimately a very good thing. But it does provide an interesting look inside Apple’s philosophy with the iPad mini, and just how much the company is intent on making sure it’s not a compromised version of the standard iPad experience.
